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Introduction: T.S. Eliot On The Aims Of Education
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10442 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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2 / 1993 |
258 Words |
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Editor
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Last month THE WORLD & I published excerpted versions of the first two lectures on education given by T.S. Eliot at the University of Chicago in 1950, together with four commentary essays by modern scholars. These essays related Eliot's thought to our contemporary situation and to our current educational problems. This month we publish the second pair of excerpted lectures, again with four essays commenting on Eliot's views.
The four excerpted lectures are statements in their own right, reflecting Eliot's educational views in a more systematic way than any other of his writings, and they are remarkably unified. The essays commenting on the first two lectures, in contrast, are surprisingly diverse in their approach to Eliot's thought, and this reflects the complexity of that thought and of the problems that Eliot and we ourselves must confront. Such diversity and complexity are borne out by this month's concluding excerpts and essays.
One enduring component of Eliot's thought, referred to and commented on by most of the essayists, is contained in his opening paragraph. He observes that all of us, having been educated, blame others or "the system" for our failure to educate ourselves. Later, Eliot states quite simply that while we are more conscious of our culture we are also more doubtful of it, and we are in increasing danger of expecting education to do for society what society should do for itself. At a time when schools are expected to do everything from providing breakfasts to preventing AIDS, it is obvious that the danger has not
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